


Distances Between

by Crownofpins



Series: Baba [1]
Category: Castlevania (Cartoon), 悪魔城ドラキュラ | Castlevania Series
Genre: Gen, Sadness, Vomiting, obligatory cart rides, touch-hungry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-02
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2019-06-20 10:36:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15532389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crownofpins/pseuds/Crownofpins
Summary: From an ask: "... I saw that you take requests and was wondering if you could write some Trevor being starved but nervous for Sypha and Alucard's affection. I love the confused puppy Trevor that you mentioned in Baba and would enjoy some more of that dynamic. ..."Alucard and Sypha are close standers. Trevor has some thoughts about that.Written prior to S2.





	Distances Between

* * *

There’s a moment, as Trevor shakes his cloak out after they’ve made it out of the rainstorm (one of the last they’ll see for a while, he suspects), where he shifts his weight, leans back just a little, and comes into contact with a lean, hard body behind him- Adrian, leaning over and around solicitously to peer out at the downpour.

Not just behind him, really _behind_ him, close enough that they must have almost been touching before he shifted.

“Fuck,” Trevor swears, jumping back, jumping out of his skin, jumping into anger because it’s easier than acknowledging the weird, creeping hunger that proximity wakes up in him. “Could you just try, perhaps, to make a _little_ more noise for our humble human senses?”

“My apologies,” Adrian says, bowing slightly, and Trevor doesn’t know him well enough yet to know if he’s mocking him or not, but he decides better safe than sorry and lashes out proactively:

“Careful you don’t get yourself stabbed for creeping up behind me, vampire,” he spits, and goes out to stand at the edge of the cave. He looks out at the rain, but this time he keeps his back to the wall. Adrian lingers, irritation in his features.

“If we are to fight against my father’s hordes effectively, then some proximity must be allowed.”

“That doesn’t mean you get to play snuggle struggle with me, asshole. Go flirt with the Speaker and leave me in peace.”

“The Speaker,” Adrian huffs, turning on his well-kept heel, “is called _Sypha_.” And then he’s gone.

Trevor blows on his fingers, watching the rain turn to snow. He finds that his mind returns, like an overeager sheepdog, to the idea of a body behind him, embracing and supporting his weight. It’s such a foreign concept after so long alone that he finds it hard to shake, no matter how hard he tries. He tries to drag his mind onto the math of how many knives he should sharpen tonight, but his mind fixes on the idea of sitting close enough to touch with either Sypha or Adrian, close enough to feel their warmth, as he works. The thought is so luminous in him that it feels like it burns—likely the burn of shame. He’s been on his own for so long. He doesn’t need anything like intimacy with these people.

“I’m fucking pathetic,” he groans, scrubbing at his face hard enough that Sypha asks if the wind has turned mean when he finally comes in.

 

 

 

“You haven’t?” Sypha asks, skeptical. “How is that possible?”

“I haven’t needed to,” Trevor shrugs. “I was born here, and I’ve gone on hunts since I was young. I know the country pretty damn well from the earth.”

“Not out there you don’t,” Adrian says, eyes scanning the darkness of the mountain path for foes human and demon alike.

“Well, sure,” Trevor agrees, unwilling to admit a gap in his education but also unwilling to cede his initial point. “But nobody lives out there except monsters. We don’t get many requests from the monsters to come slay monsters.”

“What if you got lost in the wilderness?” Sypha presses, dropping back from her middle position to walk alongside Trevor. The path widens here, and she digs in her heels, raising her hands to pull at his bicep. “Look, wait, let’s stop for a moment. It’s easy. I’ll just show you the basics.”

“Easy for you,” Trevor says, in a moment of easy humor, touched by the offer. The matching smiles Sypha and Adrian give him make his ears hot, and he huffs, dragging his arm out of Sypha’s hands. “You can show me whatever you want, but no promises on my actually being any good at it.”

“Look at that group there- do you see?” Sypha grabs again at his sleeve, excitedly pointing. Adrian comes back to stand behind them, obviously curious as well. Trevor fights off the urge to shake her off, used to a grab being followed by an attempted thrashing, and tries, gamely, to see where she’s pointing.

It’s distracting, though, standing in this sudden little cluster of people. Sypha has unthinkingly come closer, so close that he can feel her hip against him, the bony little poke of her elbows as she jostles and pulls him into the right position fearlessly. And, standing silently behind them both, Adrian is just… there.

He minds his distance this time, but it only serves to make Trevor more self-conscious.

“Those are the seven sisters, and in the winter, when it gets closer to dawn, they dance closer…”

Sypha is apparently actually kind of amazing at this. Trevor had lied—his father had tried to teach him to navigate by the stars, but the knowledge had always sort of fallen in one ear and rolled out the other. Too busy basking in his father’s limited attention to pay attention to his protracted lessons, Trevor supposes.

“So, try to remember! And I’ll ask you tomorrow again,” Sypha smiles, her eyes wide and blue and clear as a Christmas morning. “The most important part is practice. It doesn’t do any good to lecture on and on.” She squeezes his elbow, winks, and dances off down the pass.

“Perhaps we can compare notes,” Adrian says, clapping a friendly hand on Trevor’s shoulder and giving a pleasant squeeze as he walks by to follow. “Have a friendly competition.”

“Sure,” Trevor mumbles, and swallows against the unexpected lump in his throat. His shoulder and elbow feel like they’re suddenly the most important parts of his entire body, like they’re burning, like they’re back in time without the rest of him attached. He tries to shake it off, but again that sheepdog sense comes herding, nipping at him, reminding him of the softening relief it is to be petted and guided and nudged and _touched_. _Wanted._

Feeling uncomfortably like a starvation-lean dog in that moment, Trevor huffs into the cold and follows Sypha’s delighted cries into the dark. It seems she’s found a glowing mushroom.

 

 

 

“Here,” Adrian says, offering Trevor his portion of bread. The inn they’re staying in has been generous with portions tonight due to their having saved the proprietor’s daughter and wife from a demon attack early the previous morning, before the sun came up.

“I’m good,” Trevor says, shaking his head, burying his face in the stein of beer he’s happily chasing the bottom of. He points at Sypha, who is sleepily licking her fingers clean of mutton juice on the third side of the table.

“I’m full,” she announces happily, and belches. The innkeeper gives her an astonished stare, but otherwise, there’s nobody to protest. “Don’t get too drunk, Belmont. I’m going to bed! On a nice soft bed!”

“I mean, I don’t think it’s the softest ever, ma’am,” the innkeeper comments, but she waves him off with a smile.

“It’s better than the ground, isn’t it?”

“Just so,” the innkeeper agrees, and draws Adrian into conversation as Sypha vanishes into the back rooms. Trevor finds himself liking the man. He’s an enormously solid pile of muscle with big red cheeks burned that way from cold and, likely, alcohol. His wife is enormous and cute too, and their little daughter is a small mountain in the making as well. Trevor finds himself contemplating that idea- a daughter that might be taller than him, broader, stronger. He likes it conceptually, but finds the idea of forming a family in his current state so off-putting that it sours the sweet dark beer on his tongue.

He drinks more.

Adrian excuses himself as well, likely to take a bath or some ridiculous frivolous thing.

Trevor drinks some more.

“You’re a good solid drinking man like me,” the innkeeper rumbles, grinning and showing yellowed, cracked teeth. Trevor raises his beer stein cheerily.

“Haven’t had stuff this good in a long time. You brew it strong, my good man. I can’t- ulp. Can’t fight against quality.”

“Atta boy,” the innkeeper booms, slapping his palm on Trevor’s back. “Let me join you, eh? I’ll tell you all about the ins and outs of life, and you can remind me what it is to be young.”

“Sure,” Trevor agrees, tipping his head, uncertain of what, precisely, that entails.

 

 

 

As it turns out, it entails the barkeeper’s secret stash of vodka and a bottle of foreign stuff that smells, and tastes, like pine tar.

By the time the innkeeper has related his entire family history, the military service of every man on his wife’s side, and his hopes and dreams for his lovable little heap of a daughter (marriage young to the blacksmith’s son who she loves dearly now, and plenty and plenty of enormous grandchildren to help him and his wife in the inn once they grow old), Trevor is so drunk that he thinks he might, finally, go blind. The innkeep, Luca, is still pounding away shots like he’s made of the stuff. Trevor supposes there’s a lesson in here somewhere, something about trying to drink the earth itself under the table, but he can’t focus his eyes and like hell can he form any thoughts more complex than ‘piss’ and ‘lie down now please please please.’

“Oh,” Luca says, his mustache twitching and bristling in strange animate bursts, and he nudges Trevor so hard he falls off the bench. “Your friend is come for you, boy. Let him live a little!” This last part he directs to Adrian, who is leaning over and trying to wrestle a very drunk, very noodle-limbed Trevor to his feet.

“Your hospitality is too generous, sir,” Adrian says, nodding regally. Trevor finds himself tucked under Adrian’s shoulder before he can even comprehend that he’s upright again; he suppresses the urge to vomit.

“Nonsense!” Luca booms, raising yet another little glass of vodka up to his mouth. “Come and have a drink with me, sir, and I’ll tell you everything I know!”

“A generous offer,” Adrian says, a fond smile playing about his mouth, “but I think I must get my companion to bed. We have much ground to cover tomorrow, my good host, and unfortunately, I doubt his constitution to be as robust as yours.”

“He’s a good boy,” Luca says in a tone like he’s agreeing. “He drinks like a fish! A good Wallachian son! Someday you’ll make a good husband, my boy!”

“Thanks,” he whispers, absolutely certain he’s a second away from vomiting on everything he’s ever loved.

 

 

 

Lucky for him, he manages to throw up in the chamber pot, which Adrian very firmly dumps out the window before rounding on Trevor.

“You just couldn’t help yourself, could you?” He growls, mopping up the sick at the corner of Trevor’s mouth with a wet washing cloth. “You just had to stick your nose in the cups as deep as you could get it.”

“Ugh,” Trevor comments, his head spinning, “he, he liked me well enough, so, worth it,” and he throws up again in the emptied chamber pot tucked between his knees.

“You will likely never see him again, so I fail to see how that matters,” Adrian shoots back, fiery as Sypha can get, and wrinkling his nose empties the pot again out the window. He doesn’t look as he does it, which Trevor takes to mean that it’s late enough that nobody is on the streets. “Are you going to throw up again?”

“No,” says Trevor, and does.

Adrian watches him heave with palpable irritation.

“You are a revolting alcoholic,” he says.

“You’d drink too,” Trevor says, letting Alucard wash his face again roughly with a clean section of the cloth, “wouldn’t you? If nice cheery men like Luca took your seven pretty sisters and roasted them up like Christmas ducks, in an oven made of your childhood home?” And this time when he throws up, it’s not just the alcohol doing it.

“Oh,” says Adrian, quietly, and this time he waits for a moment, for Trevor to stop gagging, and he empties the pot and rinses it with the pitcher and tucks it at the foot of their shared bed in silence. Trevor takes up the wash cloth and wipes his mouth himself, then curls up on himself in the bed and shuts his eyes.

“Forget I said that,” Trevor says, his words slurred and heavy with unspoken pleas. He opens his eyes and then screws them shut tighter.

“I cannot,” Alucard tells him gently, smoothing his sweaty bangs from his face with a tender hand. Trevor wishes he could say anything to that, but he’s unconscious so suddenly that it’s like he’s simply left the room.

 

 

 

“Horrible,” Trevor hears Sypha comment lowly from up at the head of the cart. As it turned out, she was by far the most experienced with driving a mule and cart, and so she’s been driving for most of the day. Trevor has taken a few turns with limited success, but they’ve all sort of agreed to politely ignore the possibility of Adrian driving; the one turn he took was quite enough. “I heard something about it, but I didn’t imagine that it would be so… grotesque.”

“Are you two gossiping about my grand adventure last night?” Trevor asks, popping up behind them. Contrary to their expectations, his hangover hasn’t been much to speak of. He’s had a lot of time on the road to kill his liver and destroy his senses, and a lot of time to get used to drinking like he’s trying to die. “Because it sounds like you’re just jealous.”

Sypha colors and fixes her eyes on the road ahead, her mouth slamming shut. Adrian draws his gaze over him, up and down, steady and meticulous. There is, perhaps, a different look in his eyes when he gazes at Trevor. He’d noticed it this morning but didn’t know what to make of it; he still doesn’t now in the midafternoon light.

“Absolutely not,” Adrian snaps. “And if you drink like that again, I’m leaving you to drown in a pile of your own vomit.”

“Careful,” Trevor grins, “I’m a back sleeper. Might happen after all.” Adrian gives him a deeply dismayed stare; Trevor prefers to think that it’s at the idea of having to deal with his vomit again.

Sypha shimmies to the side of the bench, away from where Trevor is leaning out from the cart, and, without looking at him, pats the wood at her side. “Come sit with us. The ride is smoother up here.”

“Not a lot of room there,” Trevor snorts. Adrian moves over as well, leaving a clear, Trevor-sized space in the middle. “My big, burly Belmont ass is going to take full advantage of all the free space back here.”

It is dead uncomfortable and jerky as shit. Trevor isn’t about to spill the beans on himself, though.

Adrian looks at Trevor, then Sypha. Sypha gives Trevor the side-eye, still watching the mule carefully.

“Come sit, Belmont,” Sypha says again, and as much as Trevor wants to resist, her tone is so gentle, so inviting, that he does just that and clambers over to be squeezed between them.

It’s uncomfortable at first, especially since Trevor holds himself stiffly, deeply aware of the press of Alucard’s thigh on one side and the warmth of Sypha’s thigh on the other. But gradually, he relaxes, and before he knows it they’re all laughing and joking as they go down the road. Trevor reveals his hidden talent for voice mimicry, and they all have fun lampooning the irritated self-styled mayor they’d met three villages back. At some point Adrian puts his arm around Trevor’s shoulder, and Sypha cuddles into him half-under his cloak for warmth, and Trevor feels so filled with something he didn’t even know he’d been empty of that it rises up in him and chokes him, almost, comes in big waves and just carries him away into some emotion he used to know, used to name, but now only thinks of as dangerous.

It’s so, so easy to fantasize about a future spent like this, just like this, with warmth and companionship and laughter. Trevor lets himself dwell on it, lets his mind ease and rest as his tired body soaks in the contact and finds it good.

But he barely knows them, these people. He barely knows them, and in a world where people you know your entire life can murder every single member of your family in a single night,

how can he possibly come crawling into another false haven?

Trevor frees himself, chuckling still, from both Adrian and Sypha’s holds.

“Gotta’ stretch my legs,” he tells them, and without looking back he slips into the cart, then down onto the road to walk up next to the donkey.

“Of course,” Sypha says, her voice quiet and thoughtful, and filled with a painful sort of understanding that makes Trevor hunch his shoulders against it like it’s the north wind itself.

Trevor fixes his gaze steadily on the mountains in front of them far in the distance, rising imperious and unforgiving. He doesn’t think about that strong arm of Alucard’s on his shoulders, about Sypha nestled sweetly into his cloak. Having gotten that taste, he feels himself going mad with it, circling and ravenous, like a dog who’s gone feral with the taste of human blood on his teeth.

He wishes he’d never sat between them.

He vows never to again.

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Depending on how you want to roll, this can stand by itself or fold in as a piece set prior to Baba.
> 
> Find me here: [Twitter](https://twitter.com/crownofpins) or [Pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.io/Crownofpins)
> 
> Please make sure to stay hydrated! And thank you, as always, to you kind folks who are interested in my work. I appreciate you so, so much.


End file.
